


Samandriel Was Good

by 22to22



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Autopsy, Gen, Trueform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 18:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/22to22/pseuds/22to22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set right after the episode "Torn and Frayed." Naomi examines Samandriel's battered corpse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samandriel Was Good

Being in her old office of operation eased Naomi’s tension dramatically. Sure, Heaven was a definitive collection of wonders, God’s greatest hits remixed by His favorite children, but the Ministry of Mercy was a place for angels. There were no human eyes to shield from divine brilliance here, no human lungs that needed distorting air in this perfect vacuum. 

She relaxed her form and let the walls of the autopsy room define her, releasing shape in favor of multidimensional wavelengths that bounced and echoed all the information they touched. In this way, she examined Samandriel’s corpse.

Alfie’s human soul was safely spirited away to his own just rewards in God’s fields; that, at least, had gone according to plan. All that remained of the boy here was his broken and bloodied body, to which Samandriel was still tethered. Alfie’s flesh was ventilated with wounds, bruises on his wrists and neck and ankles, triangular holes carved in his torso by angel blades.

Angel blades. That Crowley had somehow come into possession of. Because Virgil, weapons keeper of heaven, whose task it was to protect these powerful tools from falling into the wrong hands, was now as good as a set of wingprints in another dimension. That was something else she would have to address from her borrowed desk. 

For another time, she decided, and returned her attention to the deceased. The holes in Alfie’s skull drove deep into his brain; Crowley’s flunky had at least a passing understanding of the psuedophysical relationship between possessor and possessed, but they lacked finesse. They had taken obvious pleasure from the brutality of it and prized only knowledge taken by force. Well, that was demons for you: too absorbed in the instant feedback of agony to take the time to deconstruct properly the first go-around. Probably better that way, she reasoned, since there was a good chance they had missed more than they hit.

She would have to unbind the two corpses to understand the full damage. Naomi resonated Enochian commands that coaxed the dead angel from its vessel, a celestial body reduced to a fragile framework of ash too eager to crumble under its own weight. Samandriel unraveled before her in a familiar map: the same as was charted in her bones, and in Castiel’s. The base code of an angel. God’s Will, breathed forward and given form and movement and sharp, righteous purpose. 

Or, at least, a dead echo of God’s Will in the only form she had ever understood it: dull and broken and cold, spread across an autopsy table.

Fractured Enochian, like burst blood vessels, guided her to sections Crowley had managed to reach. These refrains were still raw and swollen from the pins. Naomi thrummed with displeasure. Crowley didn’t find everything, but he had still heard enough to become a tremendously dangerous enemy of Heaven. 

Samandriel’s wounds were surrounded by agony and regret: _my tongue is no longer mine, no, no don’t speak, no, sorry, so sorry, sorry, don’t tell, so sorry._  
Not asking for forgiveness, knowing she would never grant it for such deep treason, even if it was unwitting and unwilling. 

Just…seeking to repent. 

Not that it mattered, now that the damage was done, and everything about that mission had exploded in her face. Samandriel never did know when to keep their damn fool mouth shut, and she had panicked—already they had compromised Heaven with their words, and then they aimed to compromise her careful work with Castiel! Well, it worked, didn’t it? Because before she could sort her thoughts, something cruel in her had unfurled, a destructive impulse that overrode months of Castiel’s careful behavioral framework to enforce murder. Castiel was supposed to develop into a trustworthy independent agent, someone for whom safeguarding the well-being of Heaven was second-nature; their causes were meant to be the same. Instead, the trembling wreckage from Purgatory had been reduced from potential ally to mindless tool in one hasty order.

 _Thoughtless,_ she reprimanded herself. _Pointless and rash and unbecoming a servant of the Lord._

Naomi dwelt on the triangular killing blow, half hoping the shape would fold her frequency into a patterned scar. She needed to remember this. Her decisions held irrevocable consequences. The war for Paradise stretched out for eons in both directions, and this was just one of many battles, but this one, she had been responsible for. This one, she had lost.

Naomi traced the fatal wound like a meditation. One, two, three. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Lucifer, Raphael, Castiel. A wound, that’s all they were now: their absence was a gash in Heaven’s side that could not be sutured shut and wept blood and infection, and for what? Free will, she sneered. Lot of good it does man, and even less for Heaven.

She folded Samandriel back into Alfie’s body. When she returned to hands and wings and eyes, she found her fingers smeared with ash. She ground the soot between the ridges of her fingerprints with the intent of a permanent stain. She had done wrong, but there was no one left for her to repent to. Samandriel was dead, Father never seemed to care much about His angels slaughtering each other, and Castiel was now a wavering servant to whom an apology would read as weakness.

She swallowed her guilt like a coal and let it burn in the pit of her throat.

_Accept it. Move on. Redemption is too tall an order. Don’t ask for it. Let it go._

_None of it matters unless you keep Heaven safe._


End file.
